Though Cloverfield is definitely one of the great giant monster movies of recent years, it's best feature was also its worst feature: the reality-TV feel to the acting and camera work. I'm a fan of the jiggy-cam stuff, but I was one of many who had no sympathy at all for the entitled yuppie main characters who YouTubed their own demise. Now a new crop of truly indie monster movies may offer a corrective to the New York rich kid POV in Cloverfield. The forthcoming Blob-meets-illegal-pharmaceuticals flick Bio-Slime, whose trailer you can consume right here, is a good example of these new-style monster flicks, whose low production values look suddenly professional in light of the faux-low production on Cloverfield. Other indie monsters are rampaging in your DVD drive next year too.

In Birth of a Legend: Story of the Wawa, irradiated worms used by Alabamans fishing in a polluted river turn into a giant monster that eats people. Here's a plot synopsis:

Sweet Tee, Alabama was a friendly town, Family Friendly. But Sweet Tee had a secret. You see, in the Tennessee River that flowed right through the middle of town, there lived some kind of a swamp monster. And it preferred the taste of human flesh over all others. A loser journalist, a burned-out hippie and a brainy scientist chick found themselves smack dab in the middle of this situation... and it was up to them to fix things.

And another regional flick, Serpent Lake
, is set in Minnesota, where people have started disappearing. According to the filmmakers:

This monster is one of the best-known mysteries of crypto zoology. Most scientists and other experts find current evidence supporting the creature's existence unpersuasive and regard the occasional sightings as hoaxes or misidentification of known creatures or natural phenomena. Minnesotans believe in this legend, even though their theories may vary. The creature thought to be a plesiosaur being the most popular of these theories.

Both the Wawa and the Serpent, like Clovie, come from the water and just want to eat people and be left alone.

I look forward to a return to the 1970s monster movie era, when cheapo productions in the Midwest and the South churned out great flicks about monsters created by evil polluters, evil yuppies, evil corporations, evil racists, evil people in small towns, evil aliens, and evil government programs.